“If
you put a mirror in a box, does the mirror reflect the darkness in the
box?”

He looked at me for a moment then turned to an
attendant and asked for a glass of water. The Zen Center lecture hall was
packed. The ‘horseness of a horse’ and ‘beingness of being’ responses all
seemed to have ended with my question to Chogyam Trungpa. As a prolonged
silence fell over the room I felt a sudden and excruciating embarrassment
at having asked the wrong question. Trungpa was just sitting there waiting
for me to say something more. Finally he swung back with a bored look, and
after pondering me for what felt like a couple more minutes:

“You
put the mirror in the box, you figure it out.”

I was an insect pinned to the wall. I was a tiny
embarrassing person in full lotus holding a little black box. My first
hammer blow into obscurity. That was his answer, I realized. And as if to
underline his point, the repartee of head-spinning semantics began anew
with other questions from the crowd and even wittier responses from
Trungpa.

This controversial Tibetan Buddhist had captured
my imagination. The empty cleverness of the question was easily answered
by science, yet Chogyam had speared me with his Vajra. After so many
‘profound’ Zen lectures, this simple exchange shook me up. Trungpa had
reached out to tap the empty noggin, and the sound of it echoed around me
for years. The exchange was a wakeup call after five years of Zendo-wall
face plants and kyosaku encouragements.

Ed Brown rose out of the Soto profundity with
his carbon-marshmallow humor, and then several years later with his
‘potato chip’ lecture at Green Gulch Farm in which somber monks handed out
potato chips so everyone could experience a ‘potato chip’ moment together.
Lew Richmond and David Chadwick gave hilarious lectures. Even the
ever-serious Irishman Paul Haller, picked up the baton once in a while.
Yet the serious streak in Zen Center as a whole had already begun to
overwhelm the old quirks and catastrophes of the past.

One such memorable series
of catastrophes occurred during the last two or three summers I was at
Tassajara when alcohol was allowed monks during the July 4th
celebrations. Initially things went well with our pot-smoking
beer-guzzling trance music jams in the lower barn, but by the third year
some of us were gravitating toward the swimming pool. OMG! Guests now
witnessed the bell-ringers and chanting enlightenment seekers laughing
hysterically and drinking beer in bathing suits. This jittery vision of
monks letting loose in some sort of catharsis shocked them and complaints
were made. Our image of calm was losing its authenticity and order had to
be restored for the Zen Center business brand to survive. The Puritan
response ended the practice.

But there is no replacement for seeing all sides
of the monks you practice with. There is even a special terminology in
Japan for cutting business deals with prospective partners only after
you’ve been drunk together.

Now after eight years of practice at the ripe
age of twenty-five my desire for some connection to a teacher peaked.
Richard Baker-Roshi was still too busy integrating Zen into America, so I
had to look elsewhere in ZC for a teacher.

Being a runner, I learned Reb Anderson also ran.
I joined him a few times on his runs through Golden Gate Park to Ocean
Beach. The usually severe Reb softened on these occasions. At say five
miles in and pushing a strenuous pace he showed a remarkable mindfulness
for his surroundings, and on two occasions we ran off trail to spread
awareness into some of the darker places. (At the time there were reports
of rapes and muggings in GG Park, and this was Reb’s way of putting a
presence out there). We would talk about Zen as we went. Though we ran
only a few times, these moments have stayed with me. What he was doing
wasn’t kinhin exactly, but something like it and far more grueling. For
the first time in a long time the feeling of being connected to someone
who carried the teachings into even these kinds of activities was
inspiring. (Several years later I heard the story about Reb. What stood
out for me in that story was how Reb was victimized in a bad neighborhood,
victimized by the legal system, and then re-victimized by not a few people
in Zen Center for his lapse. That lack of compassion was saddening, and
once again, Puritan). But having a running comrade wasn’t enough, and I
decided to move back to Canada.

My final meeting with
Richard Baker-Roshi was sad in that he offered to ordain me at the point I
was leaving. But I was already in Spinoff mode. Besides, being ordained
had bothered me in ZC because there were some ordained students who
considered themselves more mindful than those they had started with, only
after being ordained. I later learned it wasn’t a meritocracy thing – you
weren’t asked, you had to ask to be ordained.

So life in Vancouver began with the creation of
new friendships. For two years after I bowed and scraped before my
homemade alter, sat zazen, and continued training for a marathon I never
ran. Zen and Zen Center faded into a frenetic haze of work and party life.

Five years later: In my Johnny-Cash-black
leather jacket and studs and celebrating life in the underground
Industrial music scene with the likes of Skinny Puppy and Frontline
Assembly, I started to miss something. Alien Sex Fiends, Swans,
Einsturzende Neubauten, and Mortal Coil were part of my oeuvre then, but
there was a sense that burnout and boredom were approaching. With my
after-burners starting to fizzle, I learned had been unwittingly carrying
that innocuous sounding Buddhist torch of ‘selflessness’ toward a
precipice. So the Spin back toward ZC began with the need to get away from
the Vancouver scene.

Contacting a former friend
from Zen Center, Ernie Gundling – who was then living in Japan, I quickly
jumped on a flight for Tokyo to escape the Charybdis.

Japan became a touchstone. Eight years worth of
experiences in ZC were finally illuminated after I began to see how Zen
Buddhism was embodied in Japanese culture. How the blend of indigenous
heritage and Buddhist teachings unfurl in a dual richness cannot be
anticipated without going to Japan. So still donning a blue snakeskin
wristband and studded leather belt, I sat my first Rinzai winter sesshin
in over six years with Harada-Roshi in Okayama. With its old graveyard,
ancient Shinto shrine further up the hill, Zen bells echoing through the
surrounding town, and those early morning Tai Chi moments with Harada-roshi,
that temple was an exhilarating place to be.

I lived just outside the monastery with Ernie
and Laurie who were having their first child, Christopher. Besides
starting work on his PhD thesis on Gift Giving in Japanese Corporations,
Ernie was also translating Japanese Buddhist texts. (Ernie later went on
to start up Meridian Resources and lecture at UC Berkeley.)

David Chadwick stayed for three and a half years in that
same residence outside the temple.

Tom Ninkovich (truck driver, radio host,
typographist, and former Zen student) also followed my visit to the
monastery and later stayed in Kyoto at Priscilla’s (Priscilla was an
important facilitator for many Westerners who came to Japan at that time,
and later helped Harada-Roshi come to America.

Those four months of adventure in Japan brought
back memories of California. All those midnight and daytime bicycle rides
through Kyoto exploring the city’s cultural life resonated with an equally
vibrant city: San Francisco.

After less than a month in gray Vancouver, I
contacted Peter Van Der Sterre who invited me down with him and Gene De
Schmidt for demolition work on the old bathhouse complex at Tassajara.

It was here during the offseason period working
on the bathhouse demolition that I met Arthur Okamura and Elizabeth
Tuomi’s daughter, Jane Okamura.

Though passed, Arthur Okamura and Elizabeth were
always a part of Zen Center, particularly Elizabeth, who spent at least a
year at Tassajara cooking in the kitchen. Arthur and Liz met each other at
the University of Chicago, after which they married and moved to Bolinas,
where (few people know) they bought the house Isadora Duncan built there
before her death. Besides Beth, who has taught at Oxford, and Ethan, a
well-known Marin musician, and Jonathan, a Marin surfer star, they had
Jane. If there is an inner kernel of Zen Center and Zen practice, it has
always needed a social-cultural shell of people who are its advocates and
sympathizers, and all of the Okamura’s have always been that.

Jane Okamura is a Japanese-American cowgirl who,
in the past, won many awards barrel-racing horses at rodeos throughout
California and Nevada. At the time I met her, Jane was at Tassajara
recovering from that life on the frontier. My connection to Jane was a
strong one, and by the time the demolition work was over and I was to
return to Vancouver, I made a promise to return to San Francisco.

Within six months of that promise we were living
together and working at Greens under David Chadwick. (And how strange are
the parallels, but after Arthur and Liz broke up, David and Elizabeth
became a pair for nine years. David renovated and expanded the studio at
the house in Bolinas to become a sound studio and facilitated many events
there). Two years later Jane and I were mother and father to Taro Tuomi
Smithson. Little Buddha we called him. He barely ever cried. Once again,
David was around for that.

Five years later I was still in San Francisco
but now working for George Chakos and his Chroma Painting. Some friends in
Vancouver put out the word for me to join them in the IATSE film union in
Vancouver, and so again began the irregular work oscillations between two
residences (much as in the logging years). I took up Shorinji Kempo at a
Zen temple in Japan town where I later learned Suzuki-Roshi had first come
to live in California. Though not the original building, it is Sokoji. I
worked for years at the Cherry Blossom Festival for Sokoji making and
serving ‘octopus balls’ and performing Shorinji Kempo demonstrations at
the festival.

Jane and I separated. A couple of friends
introduced me to an Irish Catholic girl from Boston working for Chanel.
Susan McAlarney and I were married in the Shakespeare Gardens in Golden
Gate Park, and after a few years in San Francisco, moved to New York. A
training executive for Chanel in Manhattan, Susan became fast friends with
Gavin Newsom’s wife Kimberly Guilfoyle after she moved to New York to
become part of CNN’s court reporting following his inauguration as Mayor.
Between the two of them hobnobbing between media and fashion parties,
Susan and I soon ran into difficulties and decided to call it quits. Not
long after that Gavin and Kimberly split.

Returning to SF, I got caught up in all the talk
about the new/old Alumni gatherings that were getting started. That ZC
would go back to those who had been a part of its roots was inspiring.
That David Chadwick would help initiate this and establish a website (cuke.com)
that connects us all, I thought was a clarion call for re-emergence. How
it fares for others I don’t know, but the diversity of backgrounds and
life trajectories, our Spinoffs and Spin backs, has rich possibilities.
(Talking with Ulysses recently about the 2012 event at Greens was
uplifting. He described a whole new generation of students who are
throwing off the old Puritan streak and celebrating in an open way).

Inspired, I started calling and reconnecting
with some of my older alumni. One of my favorites was Dan Gourley, who I’d
worked on the rock wall with at Tassajara. Always a liminal type in ZC,
Dan helped to establish the need to put computers in the schools of the
San Francisco School district. He was always the guy at Tassajara with
cartons of coke-a-cola under his bed. We often had long conversations on
topics as diverse as AI, satori, and Science Fiction that went on for
hours. Always the Science Fiction go-to-guy for locals, with a library of
tomes that covered the walls of his one bedroom flat on Buchanan and
Haight Street, Dan told me a few stories of his personal encounters with
Suzuki-Roshi at Tassajara.

I was shocked to learn he’s been fighting cancer
for three years and that there is a resurgence of bad cells throughout his
body. Who would have known? He is another one who contributed greatly,
though peripherally, to the growth of Zen Center. Touched by Suzuki-Roshi
back in the day, he spent several training periods at Tassajara and has
reached back to touch ZC in many unseen, unrecognized ways. Though he
could never make it because he was too sick, the Alumni gatherings have
put a sparkle in his eye.

His blood and his stories
may soon pass into the sea. But he is a fighter, so who knows? He’s one
more bright but hidden presence – one more mirror, still flickering away
in the dark Zen Center treasure chest.

Yes, Chogyam, I may have put a mirror in the
box, but I forgot to mention the firefly I left inside it. So when the
light is gone, is the mirror gone also?